Editing Firmware (section)

=== Computers ===
[[File:AMI 486DX EISA BIOS 20051109.jpg|thumb|right|ROM [[BIOS]] firmware on a [[Baby AT]] [[motherboard]]]]

In some respects, the various firmware components are as important as the [[operating system]] in a working computer. However, unlike most modern operating systems, firmware rarely has a well-evolved automatic mechanism of updating itself to fix any functionality issues detected after shipping the unit.

A computer's firmware may be manually updated by a user via a small utility program. In contrast, firmware in mass storage devices (hard-disk drives, optical disc drives, flash memory storage e.g. solid state drive) is less frequently updated, even when flash memory (rather than ROM, EEPROM) storage is used for the firmware.

Most computer peripherals are themselves special-purpose computers. Devices such as printers, scanners, webcams, and [[USB flash drive]]s have internally-stored firmware; some devices may also permit field upgrading of their firmware. For modern simpler devices, such as [[USB keyboard]]s, [[USB mouse]]s and [[USB sound card]]s, the trend is to store the firmware in on-chip memory in the device's [[microcontroller]], as opposed to storing it in a separate [[EEPROM]] chip.

Examples of computer firmware include:
* The [[BIOS]] firmware used on PCs
* The [[Unified Extensible Firmware Interface|(U)EFI]]-compliant firmware used on [[Itanium]] systems, Intel-based [[Mac (computer)|Mac]]s, and many newer PCs
* [[Hard disk drive]], [[solid-state drive]], [[optical disc drive]] and optical disc recorder firmware<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Mielewczik |first=Michael |date=2000 |title=Firmware-Update. Mehr Speed und Sicherheit |journal=PC Praxis |language=German |volume=1/2000 |pages=68}}</ref>
* [[Video BIOS]] of a [[graphics card]]
* [[Open Firmware]], used in [[SPARC]]-based computers from [[Sun Microsystems]] and [[Oracle Corporation]], [[PowerPC]]-based computers from Apple, and computers from [[Genesi]]
* [[ARCS (computing)|ARCS]], used in computers from [[Silicon Graphics]]
* [[Kickstart (Amiga)|Kickstart]], used in the [[Amiga]] line of computers ([[Power-on self-test|POST]], hardware init + [[Plug and Play]] [[Autoconfig|auto-configuration]] of peripherals, [[kernel (operating system)|kernel]], etc.)
* [[Run-Time Abstraction Services|RTAS]] (Run-Time Abstraction Services), used in [[IBM System i|System i]] and [[System p]] computers from [[IBM]]
* The [[Common Firmware Environment]] (CFE) for [[Broadcom]] [[systems-on-chip]] (SoCs)
[[File:Firmware update Fuji Instax Liplay.jpg|thumb|Updating the firmware of a [[Instax|Fuji Instax]] camera]]